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These days, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who hasn’t at least thought about starting an e-commerce business. The U.S. leads the world with an estimated 14 million e-commerce sites, and that number will continue to grow as online sales continue to gain traction among everyone from established brick-and-mortar businesses to individuals taking their first entrepreneurial steps .
While setting up an eCommerce store is easier than ever, unfortunately making sales and being successful is as difficult as ever. Perhaps even more so given the growing competition. As the CEO of an on-demand consumer goods platform, I have a front-row seat to the trials and successes of today’s digital companies. I’ve seen first-time entrepreneurs achieve life-changing successes, and I’ve seen great ideas fizzle out due to poor execution and everything in between.
What I’ve noticed is that people succeed in many different ways, but often fail in the same ways. It’s hard to spot a success story before it happens, but it’s easy to tell if a company will struggle. With that in mind, here are the four most common mistakes to avoid when starting an eCommerce business.
Related: Entrepreneurs: Are You Making These 10 Mistakes?
Succumb to perfection paralysis
Some great products never saw the light of day just because the business owner couldn’t find the perfect button color for their website. This sounds ridiculous – until you find yourself in this position and lose countless hours fussing over the little things and trying to make everything perfect.
Perfectionism is a common vice, especially among young professionals, as they don’t know what is “good enough”. People go to great lengths to imitate the best examples in the industry, but they forget that the larger companies often have entire teams of developers, designers and copywriters to do what the entrepreneur is trying to do alone. “Doing things right” is just unrealistic.
Instead, it may make sense to take a page from a product developer’s book and focus on an MVP – a minimum viable product. The idea behind an MVP is that you do the minimum to get a functional product or, in our case, a store. And once it’s running, you can iterate, improve and refine it to your heart’s content. This will help overcome perfection paralysis and focus on what really matters.
Sell to everyone
Speaking of moving needles, building a brand without understanding the customer is like navigating without a compass. Sure, you may be moving, but in what direction? What challenges will you encounter? Should you have brought hiking boots or a boat?
The ABCs of Entrepreneurship shows you that in order to be successful, your business must meet a real need. But it’s up to you to find out who exactly has this need. Most often it is a small subgroup of people. (And if not, that’s a warning sign that you may be biting off more than you can chew.)
This audience will have unique characteristics including demographics, preferences, pain points, and more. Successful companies use these factors to create tailored messages, select the best advertising platforms and further develop their offering. Conversely, unsuccessful companies are unaware of who these potential customers are and instead opt for blanket communications aimed at everyone and no one in particular.
Experience shows that a laser-focused approach casts a wide net every time.
Related: I became a successful entrepreneur by accident. Here are 5 mistakes I’ve learned to avoid when starting a business
Refusing to conform or admit mistakes
Failure is an inevitable part of early entrepreneurship. Unfortunately, it is at this early stage that people are most idealistic. They have fixed expectations about how everything will work and have tunnel vision when it comes to bringing that specific idea to life rather than building a successful business.
As you might expect, this initial vision is mostly misguided. Do you want to stand out with a distinctive brand voice? There’s a reason no one else does it. Do you want to bring a product to a new audience? There’s a reason this audience wasn’t interested in this product.
The hallmark of a high potential company is the ability to recognize when their idea isn’t working and turn to an alternative. Yes, it’s hard to kill your darlings, but if you don’t, you’ll be banging your head against the wall and wasting resources on a failed concept.
Note that this is not just about your business idea, but about all your business activities, including design, marketing, product, etc. If something doesn’t work, adjust it.
I’m trying to juggle everything on my own
The journey from idea to first sale requires a diverse set of skills, which means sole proprietors have to take on many tasks. They need to be designers, copywriters, website developers, user experience experts, accountants, partnership managers and marketers – all without even mentioning the product itself, which includes design, sourcing, logistics, photography and more.
Some people do it, and that’s admirable. But you don’t have to go at it alone.
For example, I often see aspiring entrepreneurs being tricked into learning fringe skills like graphic design, when in reality they need little more than a logo that would cost five dollars from a freelancer on a construction site. What’s worse is that people get burnt out from constant learning and give up on their business ideas just because they can’t do something that they could have paid someone else a few dollars to do.
Sure, those who fight through like to wear their adversity as a badge of honor. It’s human nature to take pride in doing things the hard way. But it’s not necessarily good business.